Amnesty International to Engage Experts to Verify Ukrainian Armed Forces Report

The report of the human rights organization Amnesty International on violations of the laws of war by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) will be studied by independent experts, reported agency DPA with reference to the statement of the organization.

Amnesty International’s board of directors will determine the details of the review process next week. Before that, various organizations, according to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, citing the DPA, will be able to “contribute”, including the head of the Ukrainian office of the organization Oksana Pokalchuk. She resigned in protest after the release of the report.

Amnesty Germany said the results of the report were not presented with the necessary “delicacy and precision”. “This also applies to the subsequent communication and the reaction of the International Secretariat to public criticism,” the agency quoted the organization as saying.

On Friday, human rights activists said they wanted to understand what went wrong and why, in order to “learn lessons and improve human rights work,” writes DPA.

An Amnesty International report published on August 4 noted that the UAF’s tactics endanger the lives of civilians, violating the laws of war. According to human rights activists, the Ukrainian military is setting up military bases in residential areas, including schools and hospitals, and carrying out attacks from there. Twenty-two of the 29 schools in southeastern Ukraine visited by Amnesty International housed either UAF personnel or Ukrainian military equipment and weapons.

The day after the publication, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky accused Amnesty International in an attempt to “amnesty” Russia and “shift responsibility onto the victim”, and Pokalchuk left her post. On August 7, Amnesty International apologized for the “painful and angry” report, but did not retract its findings.